


Five Times Orochimaru Didn't Leave Konoha

by Lilac_Motion



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternative Universe - Canon Divergence, Buffy Reference, Co-Parenting, Dan/Tsunade - Freeform, Five Things Challenges, Fix-It, For Science!, Genderbending, Giant Snake, M/M, Mitsuki's parentage, Mom!Orochimaru, Orochimaru and Tsunade friendship, Sannins, babies ever after, cloning, fem!Orochimaru - Freeform, protective!Orochimaru, something to remember him by
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 10:34:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8324530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilac_Motion/pseuds/Lilac_Motion
Summary: Five Times Orochimaru Didn't Leave Konoha: 1. Root was uprooted early, and Orochimaru mixes his Senju revival project with parenthood -- 2. Dan left Tsunade something to remember him by -- 3. Nawaki survives the explosion -- 4. Orochimaru's parents lived longer -- 5. Sarutobi Hiruzen watches the world burn -- 6. Most of Jiraiya's heart went into his writing





	1. Root was uprooted early, and Orochimaru mixes his Senju revival project with parenthood

Orochimaru sat slumped over his work desk, half-drowsing in the warmth of his well-heated personal laboratory, Tsunade's laments still ringing in his ears.

The enhancer Orochimaru had started working on in the wake of Nawaki's death was completed, he had intended it as a gift for the children of Tsunade and Dan – but Dan was dead now, and Orochimaru knew Tsunade enough to know that she would never love another.

There will be no Senju children from the last Senju.

He shelved the enhancer and started on the limb-regeneration project requested by Sarutobi-sensei. The Second War was finally drawing to a close, but many shinobi had not survived it whole. And if the Hokage's interest had a personal motivation, in memory of a late friend who was taken off the field young from the lost of a limb and an eye – Orochimaru is private enough with his own sentimentalism not to comment on it.

The initial outcomes were unpalatable – to grow clones of fresh and blood and harvest from them the parts required for those who had donated the DNA. Eventually, Orochimaru had tweaked the process to grow only the parts required, tweaked it to adjust the physical age of the parts, and in private, tweaked it to flip the genders of cloned bodies just to see what would happen. If Orochimaru had been born a woman, he would have had a softer face in adulthood – but like his mother and like he was now – his appearance would overall be androgynous.

Orochimaru could climb onto his mother's desk long before he could stand without wobbling, and he could recognize whispered words written on scrolls heavier than he was – and when they had slipped from his grasp and off the desk, his mother had laughed at his father and said that parenthood was the greatest experiment.

The enhancer sits completed and untouched in a corner of his lab. He wanted so very much to bring back Nawaki, to present a baby Nawaki to Tsunade as she once had presented her baby brother to him – but would the clone really be Nawaki without Nawaki's soul? That ways lies headaches and _heartaches_.

He looks at the body with the softer face, and remember wishing as a child that he would be as beautiful and brilliant as his mother, a delicate and deadly kunoichi. He remembers their reflection in the mirror over his mother's dresser, her combing out her long dark hair as he sat on her lap clutching her obi, wishing.

As a child, Orochimaru had adored Senju Tobirama. Tobirama was a passionate man who ruled himself with reason, and he was a fearless innovator of half the jutsus in the forbidden scrolls. Tobirama had been a great inspiration for Orochimaru, and he had died tragically young and without an heir.

Once Orochimaru had mastered modifying the Yamanaka clan's mind transfer technique, he could and he would give Tobirama that heir. Though him, the Hebi and the Senju clan would not die.

 

**Omake**

Senju Tobirama is dead – he remembers dying quite clearly: The known ambush, coming upon him like an avalanche, falling down to the sound of Hashirama's light laughter, falling away –

He tries to remember more, of what came _after_ , but that memory (of the Pure Lands), is blocked from him here, as if by a wall, here, in the world of the living, where he could see and hear but could not feel, summoned by a sacrifice and held to a form of ash and dust.

A young person is standing before him with crossed arms, eyes downcast, hair as dark and smooth as ink down to the waist line. Tobirama steps forth, and tilts the pale face up to the morning light, studying the golden eyes with the silted pupils, "you are of the Hebi clan, have we met before?" There weren't many of the Hebi clan left.

Arms still crossed, the young person straightens with a gesture of vague familiarity, "My name is Orochimaru, I was a student of Sarutobi Hiruzen, alongside your niece, Tsunade."

Tobirama remembers a brilliant and strange boy he had brought with him to see the body of Uchiha Madara, so small then and already so sure, unflinching and focused as he soaked up Tobirama's lessons on how to extract secrets from the dead. He remembers a boy with a delicate face, and before him stands a _woman_ , androgynous, slender curves hidden beneath her dark blue kimono, but Tobirama was raised alongside many kunoichi who had dressed like men for the road and the softer lines were unmistakeable. He looked pointedly down the young person's chest, hips, and back up to the face, raising his own eyebrow in question.

"You engineered a technique that raised the dead, Tobirama-sama, are the transfer of minds between bodies or their alteration that implausible?" She smiles at him, and flicks a lock of her hair to the back with a sweep by the back of her hand as she raised her head to look up at him – this gesture he recognizes, from a kunoichi that he surmise to be Orochimaru's mother.

Tobirama looks beyond Orochimaru (Orochi _mari_?), to where someone small is hiding behind a cluster of shrubbery at the edge of the clearing, "I gather there is a reason why you've summoned me here?"

Orochimaru clasps her hands behind her back and turns her head to the side, showing off the long line of her neck beneath Tobirama's gaze, "The Hebi clan have always been a small one, and when my parents died, it was just me," she was leaning so close, he imagine he could smell her, tea and roses (roses to hide the scent of wounds and poison), "and the Senju clan had declined to just Tsunade, who was childless when her one true love had died early."

Understanding rose in Tobirama's chest in the form of hysterical laughter – he is dead, he shouldn't be short of breath – but he's in the middle of many impossible happenstances. Orochimaru turns in a huff, have started marching away with her arms crossed stiffly across her chest, but Tobirama has always been fast, and he has her by the obi of her kimono before she is halfway to the shrubs. He leans down to whisper in her ear, not feeling the sleekness of her hair against his cheek, but watching her brush spread down the nape of her neck, "I would be honoured if you would show me, what a child of the Senju and Hebi clans would look like."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My personal canon is that the other parent of Orochimaru's first child is definitely Jiraiya, I mean, the older one (named either "Log", or "Rogu") wears a Kabuki mask and smokes pipes. Then the other parent of Orochimaru's second child, Mitsuki, is probably Tobirama because Tobirama was Orochimaru's first mancrush and Mitsuki has the same attitude as Tobirama – since Orochimaru is so outside social norms – why should his two children have the same other-parent? Here, without Danzou and Root distracting Orochimaru after the departure of Tsunade, he decides to mix his Senju revival project with parenthood and create Mitsuki decades earlier than in canon.  
> It is also my pet canon that the the seed of the project that turned 59 babies into trees started with Nawaki's death – Nawaki would have survived if he had the mokuton – and at the time Orochimaru was performing those deadly experiments, children, ordinary children, were still being sent onto the battlefield, the way Orochimaru himself had been. If you had grown up as a child soldier killing adults who hesitated against you, and killing first other child soldiers older than you, then other child soldiers younger than you, at what point can you even draw a line? Tsunade as the medic-nin had hung back before she mastered 100 Healings, and Jiraiya was a late-bloomer, so baby Orochimaru was probably the member of Team Hiruzen that did the most hands-on killings... Orochimaru's parents were the only bonds in his life not tied to killing.  
> ...and in canon Tsunade had totally seen Orochimaru's children when they were babies, and here, I picture Orochimaru sending her a request to visit Orochimaru in the middle of the pregnancy...a snake bearing a cryptic note of "Come see me." that would have Tsunade stocking up on sake.


	2. Dan left Tsunade something to remember him by

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan left Tsunade something to remember him by

Dan's body is in the morgue and Tsunade is back in her house, but she isn't drinking as Orochimaru had expected she would – he hasn't seen her raise a bottle to her lips in over a month. She's on her sofa slumped forward, gazing into the distance with a thousand yard stare, but her arms are wrapped purposefully across her belly.

Orochimaru sits down beside her and slowly leans in to take one of her hand in his. He remembers Nawaki. He remembers pictures of his mother pregnant. His voice sounds smaller than he thought possible, "I'm here for you, always." Tsunade pulls him into her arms and holds him tight, and it was like when they were children and Orochimaru's parents had just been brought back in scrolls. He lets her rock him in her arms as if he was the one needing comfort, and rests his head against her shoulder as teardrops slides down his hair.

Tsunade is the greatest medi-nin in Fire Country, greater than even Hashirama, whose powers had been instincts tied to his body, while what Tsunade has is knowledge which she _owns_. She has the strength to splatter any man with a single punch, even as her belly swells to the size of a watermelon – but Orochimaru remembers reading the death reports of several kunoichi he knows to be very strong – yet died by childbirth – and he is _terrified_.

The baby is born squalling heartily, wisps of Senju brown hair on a fat pink face and Katō Dan's dark green eyes. Heavy and alert for a newborn, the baby looks at everyone and everything in the hospital room with keen interest. Orochimaru bends down and extends one of his finger for her to grab, only to yelp and nearly lose his balance when the baby has him firmly by a lock of his long hair. Tsunade cackles and hoots, "She takes after me!"

Tsunade names her daughter Chiharu, "One Thousand Spring". Jiraiya returns to take a look at the baby, and stays just long enough to refuse to take the Hokage's hat. Something wishful struggles to rise within Jiraiya's chest when he watches _Orochimaru_ fawn over the baby in Tsunade's arm, his long dark hair tied back in a ponytail as he tries to teach the baby how to count. When Jiraiya sets out again, he does so with the newly graduated Namikaze Minato in tow.

Chiharu is the only family Tsunade has left (other than Orochimaru, and maybe Jiraiya), and she doesn't want Chiharu to be a shinobi. But Tsunade teaches the girl how to heal and Orochimaru teaches her how to hide in the guise of games, and eventually they teach her how to fight, so that if she is going to be a shinobi, she will be a strong one. Chiharu hair grows past her shoulders, and it's straight and lies flat, so she looks nothing like Nawaki, but it still feels like a second chance.

It is with little Chiharu in mind that Orochimaru interrupts Danzō's plans for Yakushi Nono and Kabuto by going straight to Sarutobi-sensei – if they are to ever stop the deployment of newly minted gennins out onto the battlefields they can't afford to let Danzō keep squandering resources by having recruits halves each other, and then using up the remainder so callously – however interesting some of the results had been.

Danzō, predictably, does not go down quietly, and having never any qualms against killing children 'to prove a point', had waited in the woods outside the Academy for Chiharu to sneak out of her class. Summoning Manda near a building full of small children ends up earning Orochimaru one of Tsunade's very special finger flicks, but watching Danzō's hilarious look of disbelief as Manda's jaws descended around him was absolutely worth the pain of broken bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chiharu (千春) means one thousand spring, according to this google result. Senju (千手) means one thousand hands, probably a reference to how Mokuton in battle can be a thousand wooden spears poking out of the woods. I just think the shape of Senju Chiharu in kanji, 千手千春, looks nice as a name (It's nice to be able to use the names I like in a fic, so that those maudlin nights where I'm thinking up names for future children while surrounded by my imaginary cats doesn't go to waste).   
> Eh, this has so much tell instead of show but I just wanted to finish something. I started writing this Highschool AU where Orochimaru and Sasuke are genderflipped, because I like seeing their teacher-student interaction and I want some SasuSaku femslash...but then I realise I write Orochimaru as a girl a lot, so I started writing a fem!Jiraiya/Orochimaru...and then in the middle of a paragraph about kunoichi and thinking how "The Sisterhood of the Travelling Knife In the Back" is a great title for Hiruzen/Danzō f/f ...I started on that, then I realise I need to sleep because I ended up writing sympathetic Danzō (I mean, Danzō's chief characterization is 'ruthless, with an axe to grind', and the kind of things that drive a woman to be ruthless with an axe to grind tends to be more sympathetic then male entitlement over why didn't I get this thing when I'm just as good or better. Or maybe it's a bias of perception that exists, fairly or not fairly, Lilian Lee said in her 1991 short non-fiction piece, "Hate", that a female ghost full of hate is the staple for selling movie seats, but a male ghost full of hate is just petty...).


End file.
